Self-Aware Active Learning Enables Continual Improvement in Autonomous Driving

2026-08-30

AI Summary

为解决自动驾驶系统在罕见情况下的突然失效问题，提出SAGE框架，通过预测风险与新奇性来主动寻求改进并减少安全违规。

Abstract

Learning-based autonomous driving (AD) systems can perform reliably in familiar conditions, yet rare distribution shifts and long-tail events remain a major source of abrupt failure. A central limitation is that most agents learn primarily from passive experience and lack mechanisms to estimate when their competence is insufficient, seek timely assistance, and convert safety-critical encounters into targeted improvement. Here we present self-aware guided exploration (SAGE), an active learning framework for post-training adaptation in AD. SAGE learns a predictive world model that generates two online intrinsic signals: fear, which estimates short-horizon predictive risk and model uncertainty, and curiosity, which measures novelty through prediction error. Curiosity adaptively calibrates the intervention threshold for fear, allowing the agent to regulate risk in a context-dependent manner. When predicted fear exceeds this adaptive threshold, the agent transfers control to an expert or fallback policy and uses the resulting takeover trajectories for focused imitation learning. In parallel, fear is integrated into policy optimization and evaluation as a safety-oriented constraint to reduce performance regressions during adaptation. We evaluate SAGE in simulated route-transfer tasks, Waymo-based logged driving scenarios, CARLA occlusion hazards, and real-world mobile robot navigation tests. Across these settings, SAGE improves robustness in novel and safety-critical scenarios, reduces safety violations, and maintains task performance comparable to strong baseline policies. These results suggest that agents can improve after initial training by estimating the limits of their competence, requesting guidance when needed, and learning selectively from rare high-value events.

Problem

• autonomous driving
• distribution shifts
• long-tail events
• predictive risk
• model uncertainty

Innovation

• Self-Aware Guided Exploration (SAGE)
• Active Learning
• Predictive World Model
• Fear and Curiosity Signals
• Post-Training Adaptation